San Diego: In Two Instances

Continuing on my mini-series of guest posts — I’d like to welcome sui sea solitaire, a stunning talent and friend.

San Diego was my first “home” away from “home.” My own irony, of course, was that neither had ever felt like home — the small suburban town I spent most of my childhood in, nor San Diego, despite its proximity to the sea. San Diego was an unwilling “home” — I’d wanted to go to New York City, Boston at least — but my family wanted me to stay in California for university, so I chose the city farthest possible away from the Bay Area that still kept me in California.

Still, I spent three years in San Diego, the longest I’ve spent anywhere in my accidentally rather peripatetic adult life (I’m hoping my current home, Seattle, will eventually beat its pathetic record). I experienced the first birth and death of a major relationship, and major loneliness and depression sandwiched on either side. I recovered from my eating disorder, relapsed, and, by the time I’d left San Diego completely, was teetering on the precipice of a major relapse of depression.

Recently, I finally decided to finish out and develop a cheap roll of film that had been hibernating in an overpriced toy camera for over three years, nervous that the film was too old and none of the photos would even come out. Remarkably, many of them did, although with light leaks and fadedness — the attendant quirks of film — and they comprise the first set you see here. I shot it in early summer of 2010; I didn’t have it developed for three and a half years. They’re from a simpler time in my life, when I was in love, when I believed in love, and when I lived so close to the ocean and took it terribly for granted.

The second set is from February 13th, 2012, or what I thought was my last full day in California, taken with an old digital SLR. I had a ticket booked from LAX to JFK that would land me in New York City at 23:59 PST on Valentine’s Day the next day, thinking that I’d never come back to the state I’d grown up in. I found myself back in California just two months and four days later, and again in August, and then it would take me another year and a few months to truly leave California for good.

Ocean Beach, Sunset Cliffs, Torrey Pines(?), May/June 2010

Torrey Pines Gliderport, February 13th, 2012

sui sea solitaire is a lover, writer, photographer, artist, and friendly neighborhood anti-heroine currently living in Seattle, WA. Check out her photography, writing, and books at IURIS AND THE SEA., see/read more from her at her blog, OCEANS., and get free poetry and love letters in your inbox from her via Letters from the Sea.

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About Esmé

Esmé Weijun Wang is an award-winning writer and advocate. At The Unexpected Shape, she provides resources that assist ambitious people who live with limitations, allowing them to develop both resilience and mastery on the path to building a legacy. Her debut novel, The Border of Paradise, is now available for purchase.

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